March 6th.

I am sending Volodya's articles. I have not forwarded them until now because I was waiting for Volodya's reply to my letter, in which I wrote to him about censorship considerations. He asked me to find out about censorship conditions — and as a result of these inquiries, it turned out that the most important thing in this regard is the place of publication. Moscow in this respect is much worse than Petersburg; there the most innocent books are held up and mangled in every way. Bulgakov's book lay in the censorship office for about a year. Vodovozova too, it seems, moved her publisher to Petersburg. Ecrivain* insists that publishing the book in Moscow would be extremely unwise. That's the situation.

Regarding my departure... I know nothing, dear Manya. There is a lady living here from Minusinsk, and she says that to leave later than the 10th-12th would be impossible — you risk getting stranded on the road. I kept hoping that the sentence would be announced on March 4th, and then we would have left on the 10th in the evening. But the sentence has been postponed until March 11th (and even that is uncertain), and they say the following in the department: my petition will "probably be taken into consideration"; if I am permitted to go to Siberia, then no earlier than after the announcement of the sentence; perhaps I will be allowed to go directly from Petersburg, rather than from Ufa Province (!). Tomorrow I shall go to the department again. I so do not want my departure to be postponed until spring. Today I am in a great hurry, but tomorrow evening I shall write to Anna Ilyinichna and tell her about the results of my journey to the department. Tomorrow I shall also be

* — Writer. Ed.